And now I’m running through the long prairie grasses and it feels good. The grasses are up to my waist and it’s like running through water, the way the grasses slap at you and tickle you. My mom always read me books about the Iowa Indians and about nature stuff. I liked the names of the flowers especially and always made her read them to me over and over again sort of like singing a song. Rattlesnake master and goldenrod and gay-feather and black-eyed Susans and silverleaf scurf pea and ragwort and shooting star. Some nights I lie in my bed when I can’t sleep and just say those names over and over and over again and imagine Mom reading them to me the way she used to, and making me learn new words, too, three “five-dollar words” (as she always called them) each and every week.
A couple times I fall down. I try not to cry. But the second time I fall down I cut my knee on the edge of a rock and I can’t help but cry. But then I’m running along the moonsilver creek, ducking below the weeping willows and jumping over a lost little mud frog, and then I’m starting up into the red cedar glade where the cabin lies.
Halfway there I have to stop and pee. Dad always says be proud I don’t pee my pants no more. And I am proud. But sometimes I can barely hold it. Like now. And I have to go. The pee is hot and rattles the fallen red leaves. I should wash my hands the way Mom always said but I can’t so I run on.
Behind me once, I think I hear something and I stop. I’m scared now, the way I am when monster movies come on TV. You shouldn’t watch that crap, Dad always says, snapping off the set when he sees that I’m getting scared. The forest is vast. Dark. Slither and crawl and creep, the things in the forest, possum and snake and wolf. And maybe monsters, the way there are in forests on TV. The Indians always believed there were beasts in the woods.
I start running again. Need to find Dad. Warn him.
Now I think of the things Mom read me about the Indians who used to live here. I like to pretend I’m an Indian. I wish I could wear buffalo masks the way they did when they danced around their campfires. Or the claws of a grizzly bear as a necklace signifying that I am the bravest brave of all. Or paint stripes of blood on my arm, each stripe meaning a different battle. They had to come get me sometimes, Mom and Dad, at suppertime, scared I’d wandered off, but I was always up at the old line shack playing Indian, talking to the prairie sky the way the Indians always had; and watching for the silver wolves to stand in the long grasses and sing and cry and nuzzle their young as the silver moon rose in the pure Iowa night.
I see the shape of the little cabin through the cedars now. It sits all falling down in the middle of a small clearing. No lights; no sound but an owl and the soft soughing of the long grasses; and the smell of rotted wood still wet from the rain last week.
I know he’s in there. I sense it.
I crouch down, the way an Indian would, and reach the clearing. And then I start running fast for the cabin.
I am halfway across the clearing when I hear a voice say, “You go back home, Bobby. Right now.”
Dad. Inside the cabin.
I am chill with sweat. And shaking. “Mike, he came out to the house, Dad and said—”
“I know what he said.”
“He says you killed Mr. Ohler.”
“I had to, son. He didn’t have no right to take our farm back. He said he was our friend but he wasn’t no friend at all.”
I don’t say anything just then; just the soft soft soughing of the wind, like the breathing of some invisible giant, sleeping.
“Mike, he says he’s afraid you’ll get killed.”
“I don’t want to go to prison, Bobby.”
“I wish I could see you.”
He’s in the window, in darkness. He’s like Mom now. I can talk to him but I can’t see him. It’s like death.
“I want to see you, Dad.”
“You just go on back, Bobby. You understand me? You just go on back to the farm and wait there.”
And then I hear something again, and when I turn I see Mike coming out into the clearing.
He looks all sloppy, his shirt untucked and his graying hair all mussed. He carries his shotgun, cocked in his arm now.
“I figured you’d lead me to him, Bobby.”
“He won’t let me see him, Mike.”
He nods and then says to the cabin. “I want to come in and talk to you.”
“Just stay out there, Mike.”
“You don’t need to make this any worse than it already is. I’m supposed to be your friend.”
“Yeah, just the way Ohler was my friend.”
“He didn’t have nothing to do with taking your farm back. It was those bastards in Minneapolis.”
“That’s what he liked to say, anyway.”
“I’m coming in.”
“I’ll shoot you if you try.”
“Then you’ll just have to shoot me, you sonofabitch.”
One thing about Mike, he makes up his mind, there’s no stopping him. No sir.
I say, “Can I go with you?”
He shakes his head. “You just stay here.”
“He’s my dad.”
“Bobby, goddammit, I got enough on my mind right now, all right? You just stay right here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m sorry I swore at you like that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I won’t be long.”
From the cabin, my dad shouts, “You just stay out there, Mike. You hear me?”
But Mike walks toward the cabin.
My dad fires.
The shot is loud and flat in the soughing prairie silence.
“Next time I’ll hit you.”
“You’ll just have to hit me, then.”
This time, the bullet comes a lot closer. This time it echoes off the hills.
But Mike doesn’t slow down.
He walks right up to the one-room cabin and kicks in the front door and then goes inside.
I walk back to the edge of the clearing and look at trees. Mom always used to read me the names of trees, too, white oak and shag-bark hickory and basswood and pin oak and green ash and silver maple and honey locusts and big-tooth aspens. Say them over and over and they’re like a song, too.
I need to pee again.
I go into the woods.
I wish I could wash my hands. It always makes me feel bad not to do what Mom says, even when she’s gone.
In the clearing again, I hear them yelling at each other inside the cabin and I get scared. And they’re starting to fight. They slam up against the walls and the whole cabin shakes. I want to run down there but I’m too scared. I don’t want to see Dad hurt Mike or Mike hurt Dad. This shouldn’t ought to be like this.
And then the shot.
Just one.
And it’s louder and the echo is longer and then there is this terrible silence and you can’t even hear the wind now.
And then the cabin door opens up and Dad comes out.
He walks to the center of the clearing, his .45 dangling from his right hand. “You get back to the farm, you hear me, Bobby?”
But I can’t help myself. I go up to him. And I put my arms around him. And the funny thing is, this time he doesn’t push me away or tell me grown men shouldn’t hug each other. He holds me real tight and I can feel how raw-boned he is, all sharp shoulders and bony elbows and gaunted ribs.
He holds me tight, too, just as tight as I hold him, and says, “I messed it all up, Bobby. I messed it all up.”
And then he starts choking and crying the way he did at Mom’s funeral and I hold him and let him cry the way Mom used to hold me and let me cry.
And then he’s done.
And standing in the clearing. And staring up at the moon the way Mom told me Indians used to. She said they believed they could read things in the moon, portents for what would happen to them in the future.